The Iranian people could rise up against the regime “within weeks,” even as the main opposition groups abroad remain splintered, further hampering efforts to overthrow a government “on the brink of collapse,” according to an exiled opponent of the Islamic Republic.
The remarks come as the Islamic Republic sought to regroup and crack down on any opposition to its rule with mass arrests while a ceasefire announced by U.S. President Donald Trump went into effect after the 12-day war.
“The Iranian people are not going to give a second chance to this regime, which is on the brink of collapse,” London-based Iranian human rights activist Vahid Beheshti told JNS on Tuesday.
The Iranian activist, who is known for his 72-day hunger strike two years ago in an attempt to pressure on the U.K. government to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group, recently set up a new organization called the Iranian Front seeking to bring about regime change.
The main Iranian opposition groups abroad are divided between the “monarchists” led by the late Shah’s son, US-based Reza Pahlavi, who fled Iran in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution, and a leftist Iranian group the Albania-based People’s Mujahideen Organization (MEK), a former armed group which carried out bombing campaigns against the Shah’s government and US targets in the 1970s but subsequently fell out of favor in Iran after siding with Iraq against Iran during the 1980-1988 war.
Pahlavi, who has positioned himself to lead a political transition, said Monday in Paris that the regime’s days are numbered and declared it Iran’s “Berlin Wall moment,” referring to the 1989 downfall of Communist dictatorships in Europe. While immensely popular with Iranians abroad, the extent of his support in Iran is unclear.
Moreover, the divisions between the two traditional Iranian opposition groups abroad have long played into the Islamic Republic’s hands.
“This was the Islamic Republic’s strategy for 46 years: to divide the opposition and to tell Westerners we don’t have a replacement,” Beheshti said. “The two traditional opposition groups are constantly fighting each other instead of fighting the regime.”
The 48-year-old activist who left Iran himself nearly three decades ago as a young man of 20 said he has faith in the Iranian people to rise up despite the tyrannical regime they are under which has brutally crushed past public protests, most recently in 2022.
“We need an opposition that can cater to all the diverse groups in Iran since the only way to neutralize the nuclear threat long-term is regime change,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel is not attempting to topple the Iranian government, but that he would not be surprised if that happened as a result of the war because the regime is very weak.
Some Israeli academics opined that while Iran is weakened as never before after the 12-day war and the US strike on their nuclear sites any regime change will still be gradual.
“I don’t think that the Iranian opposition is strong enough at this stage to challenge the pillars of the Islamic Republic,” Professor Uzi Rabi of Tel Aviv University (TAU) told JNS Tuesday. “People in Iran would like to see change but it is not something in the offing in the days and weeks ahead. We have the ingredients here, but it will take time.”
“In the short run, I am fairly pessimistic about the possibility of regime change, even though change is inevitable in the long term,” concurred TAU Professor Meir Litvak.
He cited the barriers of fear, the difficulty of organizing opposition within Iran, the ruthless regime in place and the fear of chaos or an even worse regime as the chief impediments.
“It is hard to predict when the psychological elements will crack,” he said. “It will happen, but the question is when.”